“All right. I’ll admit it—I wanted to get the damned reunion over with, since we were bound to run into each other sometime. I didn’t want an audience when it happened. Okay? I didn’t come to make friends with you.”

“Libby, a lot of stuff has happened since—” He gestured with one hand, but Libby cut him off before he could start talking again.

“I don’t want to hear about it.” She kicked a pebble with her foot, watched it bounce a couple times and then looked up at him, determined to get things straight once and for all, if that was truly what he wanted. Then maybe he’d leave.

“Here’s the deal, Kade. I trusted you. You were my lover and I trusted you.” She stopped, surprised that the corners of her mouth had started to quiver. It only took a second to regain control, but Kade had noticed. “I never thought you’d let me down.”

“There were circumstances.”

“Circumstances?” She couldn’t believe the force of anger that surged through her. “Circumstances? What circumstances led you to screw another woman—and knock her up?”

“Stop.”

He meant it. His face had turned pale. Libby shoved both hands through her curls, tilting her chin and squeezing her eyes shut, trying to get a grip. He probably didn’t want to think of his daughter as the result of knocking someone up. Even if it was true.

She opened her eyes but didn’t look at him. Instead, she focused momentarily on the gravel at her feet.

“Kade, I can tell you right now we’re not going to talk this through. We’re not going to shake hands and let bygones be bygones. I can’t do it.” She finally met his gaze. “I don’t even want to try.”

And then she turned and headed for the house, reinforcing her words with action, hoping Kade had the good sense to get in that truck and drive away. If he didn’t, things might get ugly.

Fortunately Kade knew trouble when he saw it. She heard the truck door open and shut, then the engine chug to life.

Libby kept walking.

AS SOON AS HE got home, Kade backed up to his dad’s old stock trailer. A few minutes later the trailer was hitched and he was out in the pasture slipping a halter on his horse.

A couple of hours in the mountains and then he’d go to work on the house, when he wasn’t so frustrated and pissed off that he could barely see straight. He’d had it in his mind to do two things when he moved back to Otto—make peace with Libby, or at least attempt to make peace, and find Blue. Obviously he wouldn’t be making peace with Lib, but maybe he could find his old horse and see if he’d managed to do one thing in life that hadn’t later turned to crap.

Kade parked the trailer and unloaded his horse in almost the same spot where he and Libby had parked their “borrowed” horse trailer fourteen years ago. There was a very real possibility that something had happened to Blue since they’d released him, but Kade was hoping that wasn’t the case. He wanted to see the stud running free, with many red and blue roan foals at the sides of his mares.

He smiled at the image, the tension in his muscles easing as he recalled the exhilaration, the sense of empowerment he’d felt when he’d turned Blue loose, slapping him on the butt and sending him off the hill to join the mustang herd.

Take that, Dad.

He and Libby had known enough about herd dynamics to realize Blue wouldn’t be welcome, but would hang about on the periphery until he’d managed to steal a few mares of his own. They’d discussed the possibility that Blue might not survive, but to Kade, young as he was, he thought it would be better for Blue to die in the wild than to be abused by an angry man. Kade’s father.

So they’d borrowed a trailer from Menace’s dad, taking it late at night without permission, and then they’d led Blue through the pasture and out the far gate to load him in the trailer on the county road so there’d be no suspicious tracks. A two-hour drive over to the Manning Valley, with Libby sitting close to him. They’d arrived at dawn, released Blue and been back in town by six o’clock. Menace’s trailer was back behind the barn and Libby had her dad’s truck in the garage before he’d come home from the bar. Kade had climbed in through his bedroom window and sprawled across his bed. Fifteen minutes later his dad had slammed the door open and told him to get his sorry carcass out of bed and go feed. Which Kade had done, coming back in a few minutes later to tell his dad that the blue stud was gone.

Kade had spent the rest of that day hovering between the satisfaction of knowing that the stud was safe and out-and-out fear. He’d been unable to meet up with Libby for several days, due to his old man’s fury. His dad hadn’t let him out of his sight.

Now Kade mounted and started up a road that would soon deteriorate into a rocky trail. A mustang trail. He sucked in a deep breath of mountain air. It had been too long since he’d been out here. He and Maddie had ridden around his rented property in Boise before he’d sold his second horse, but other than that, he hadn’t spent enough time in the saddle. He’d be rectifying that.

When he topped the pass leading into the next valley, he paused to let his horse have a breather. The meadow below was greening up, but the junipers and brush around it were little more than twisted black snags—evidence of a fire. The creek still ran through the meadow, pooling up at one end, but he could see that this was no longer the mustangs’ watering hole. In fact, he hadn’t seen a single sign of the herd.

He made a slight movement with his rein hand and his mount started to pick her way down the rocky trail to the meadow. If the mustangs weren’t watering there, where were they?

He drew his horse up and reversed course. He’d ride the ridge line and check the next drainage. They had to be somewhere close. Mustangs kept to their own range.

Six hours later he dismounted at the trailer. Both he and his horse were exhausted and he was by now certain that the mustang herd no longer resided in this valley.

Had some natural disaster wiped them out? There were fire scars. Disease? Had someone shot them?

Libby was a wild horse specialist. She would know.

And she’d be so happy to see him.

Maybe he’d wait a day or two before he asked.

ALMOST A WEEK had passed and Libby was still stewing over Kade’s recent visit. And it didn’t help that she couldn’t stop forming a mental picture of Kade and his daughter whenever she looked across the field and saw the lights of his trailer. The girl holding on to his belt, Kade putting a protective hand on her thin shoulder. Those little silver hearts and hot-pink kitties on the pjs.

Kade was a dad. He knew about parenting and diapers and midnight feedings. He’d experienced things that Libby was beginning to think she never would experience. Sure, she dated. She liked men. But every time someone got close, she felt the need to send him packing. Togetherness made her freeze. As a consequence, she generally didn’t didn’t date guys who wanted to put down roots.

She wasn’t certain if her commitment phobia was a character flaw or the result of Kade screwing around on her. Or if it went back even further than that, back to the time she’d finally figured out that not all parents were so busy drinking that they didn’t have time for their kid.

But she’d made her own family ties by then, attaching herself to Jason’s and Menace’s families, as had Kade. Since she and Kade had the most in common, however, and lived closest to one another, they’d hung together the most, understood each other the best—which was exactly why she’d never comprehended what had happened between them. She’d decided long ago that she wasn’t going to waste any more of her life trying to figure it out. The past was just that, and she was moving forward—if she could just get that damned father-daughter snapshot out of her head and stop feeling the jabs of pain that came with it.

Libby finally gave up and closed the computer file she’d been working on. She wasn’t accomplishing anything while her thoughts were all over the place, and she needed to concentrate as she tabulated the research results of a two-year range study. Then, as soon as she was done with the tabulations, she would write her section of a report that weighed the effects of animal usage, including cattle, native herds of deer, antelope and elk and mustangs. Which animals had the most impact on the land, which needed to be cut back during certain negative conditions. And most importantly, the optimum numbers that the range could sustain.

Glen, her former boss, had started the project the year before he retired, and she, Stephen and Fred, her coworkers, had spent the past eighteen months gathering data, as well as searching archived reports for information. Now, with no end to the drought in sight, the findings would be used as the basis for making some serious land-usage decisions. Libby wanted to be as careful and accurate as possible with her part of the report—which meant that this was not the time to work on it.

She reached for the phone and dialed the number for Menace’s service station. “This has been one long week,” she said as soon he answered.

“You at work or home?”

“Home.” Such as it was. Libby glanced around her living room, thinking she really had to spend less time in the barn and more time making her house a home. But right now her animals were more important to her than new curtains or furniture.

“Lucky you,” Menace grumbled.

“I did four ten-hour days this week,” she retorted. And thanks to Ellen and a series of “important” yet useless meetings, it felt as if she’d worked six ten-hour days. “So … are we on for this evening?”

“What do you mean, are we on?” Menace asked, sounding shocked. “It’s chorizo night at the bar. Of course we’re on.”

Chorizo night. Great. Libby wasn’t really a fan, but the Basque sausages were a local favorite, and she’d much rather lose herself in a crowd than sit at home and brood about what was. And wasn’t.

“I only asked because I heard you’ve made a new friend and I thought you might have other plans,” she said.

Menace coughed. “Uh, what new friend?”

“Your new female friend.” The one the waitresses at the café had been buzzing about when Libby had stopped to pick up dinner on her way home the night before. The new owner of the hardware store. Ginger someone.

“No plans,” he said stiffly.

“I’d like to meet her.”

“I’m taking it slow. Don’t want to scare her off, you know?”

“Good idea.” And it was about time. Menace had dreadful luck with women, and part of the problem was that his enthusiasm at actually being with a woman often overwhelmed the new girlfriend. “See you around eight?”

“Sure. But what if, you know, Kade shows up, too?”

“We already cleared the air.” Sort of. Enough for him to stay away from her, she hoped.

“Any broken bones?” Menace was only half joking.

“No,” Libby said with a sigh. If only it had been that simple.

“Glad to hear it,” Menace said. “You can’t go living your life being mad at someone.”

“I never said I wasn’t mad,” Libby said softly. “See you tonight.” She hung up and went to the back porch, where she slipped into her barn boots, whistled for the dogs and went out to feed her horses. Four hours to burn. Four hours to think too much. Maybe it was a good time to muck out the stalls.

JOE BARTON SHOWED up with three beautiful colts late Friday afternoon, colts that radiated breeding and money. Joe had come to inspect the premises before allowing his animals to stay with Kade, but since Kade had put in two backbreaking days bringing the corrals up to standard, fixing the sagging gates and rebuilding the mangers and wind shelters, Joe had no problem with what Kade had to offer. He’d stayed while Kade started ground work with the first colt, a black Appaloosa with a splashy blanket.

“I can see this will work out just fine,” Joe said when Kade released the colt and caught the second. “I’d heard good things.” He smoothed his mustache with a forefinger. “You know, I was in the stands the night that bronc beat the snot out of you. I apologize for not recognizing you at the feed store.”

“Not one of my better nights,” Kade said, tying the colt to the hitching rail. “And I don’t really want to be remembered for being beat up.”

“You came back.”

“I did.” He just hoped he could do it again, prove he wasn’t a loser.

“You don’t mind if I stop by to check progress?”

“Anytime you want,” Kade said. “I, uh, want half the payment now. The other half when the thirty days are up.”

Barton reached for his wallet and damned if he didn’t give him cash. “I want a receipt.”

“Sure.” It would have been cool to whip out a regular receipt book, but instead, Kade went into the horse trailer and wrote a receipt on the legal pad he used for his grocery lists. He handed the yellow paper to Barton, who took it and folded it carefully into quarters.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to you?” Barton asked as he put the receipt in his shirt pocket.

Kade tucked his hands into his back pockets. “You mean why aren’t I living the high life?” Why am I wearing boots that need to be resoled while you’re wearing brand-new eelskin?

“Pretty much.”

“Just the way things worked out, Mr. Barton.” He wasn’t going to recite a litany of his life errors for this guy.

Barton patted the colt that Kade had just haltered. “If I’m happy with these, there’ll be more.”

“You’ll be happy,” Kade said. Because if there was one thing Kade understood, it was horses.

“I hope so. I have some friends who wouldn’t mind having a world champion cowboy tune up their horses.”

Kade just smiled. The irony was that riding broncs and starting colts had about as much in common as did competing in a demolition derby and teaching drivers’ ed. Both might involve cars, but there weren’t a whole lot of similarities beyond that. If Barton wanted to pay for Kade’s name, however, Kade wouldn’t dissuade him. He’d do an excellent job on the colts, get paid well and they’d both be happy.

Joe left after Kade had worked the third colt, a skittish chestnut that was more difficult to handle than the other two. Kade put away his tack, then went to sit in his lawn chair and stare at the house as if it was an adversary. Which, in a sense, it was.

He wasn’t going in there tonight. He’d spent enough time alone, working on it. He felt antsy. Edgy. After he’d stopped drinking, he’d also stopped socializing for the most part. It was the surest way to avoid temptation, so he’d spent a lot of time alone. Alone was nothing new.

Maybe that was the problem.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CUPBOARDS WERE almost bare and the propane was getting low in the tanks.

Kade realized he was searching for an excuse to go to town, so why not just go? And while there, maybe he’d stop by the café and grab a bite. He’d avoided public places in Otto because he hated playing Kade Danning, rodeo champion, when that was no longer who he was. And it bothered him that people who’d ignored him back when he’d been just ordinary Kade Danning, a local kid who could have used some support while dealing with his asshole dad, now embraced him. But if he was going to be here for months and months, which seemed a definite possibility considering the condition of his father’s property, then he needed to re-introduce himself to Otto society, such as it was.

As he drove past the bar he noticed there were more vehicles than was normal for eight o’clock, but the hand-lettered Chorizo Night sign explained the full lot.

Libby’s truck was parked next to the building, and yet he pulled in anyway, citing the adage about it being a free country. He no longer drank, but what better night than Chorizo Night to say hello to his neighbors?

He spotted Libby immediately sitting at a table with Dennis Mann—Menace, they’d all called him back in high school. A tall, fair-haired guy carrying a plate filled with beans and salad, chorizo in a bun balanced on top, sat down next to Libby and she smiled at him. A few minutes later Jason Ross and a pretty blonde sat down. He’d heard Jason had gotten married. That had to be the new missus.

Kade automatically started searching for a place to sit on the other side of the room, prior to getting in line. Someone said his name and he turned to see Cal Johnson, one of his old classmates, now wearing a deputy sheriff’s uniform and sporting a shaved head.

“I’ve been planning to stop by and say hello,” Cal said. “You saved me the trouble.”

“Glad to oblige,” Kade said, shaking his hand.

More people gathered around and before long he was in the center of a crowd at the end of the food line, renewing old acquaintances, some of which he wasn’t even aware he’d had. A redhead who introduced herself as Trista attached herself to him, and it became clear that he was no longer destined to be lonely if he didn’t choose to be. He was starting to feel just a bit claustrophobic. And also like a fraud. It’d been three years since he’d won a buckle, and during one of those years he’d actively tried to destroy himself. He wasn’t really hometown-hero material. But the novelty of having a two-bit celebrity around would wear off eventually, and then maybe he could actually hang with some people. Be just plain Kade Danning.

He pulled out his wallet, paid the cashier ten bucks, got a paper plate in return and started loading up. Cal waved him over to his small table and squeezed in chairs for both Kade and Trista, who’d followed.

“I just love a good chorizo,” she said with a half smile. No doubting her meaning. Kade smiled noncommittally, then glanced in Libby’s direction. The blond guy had said something, and she was laughing. Kade took too big a bite of his chorizo and almost choked.

Maybe he should have stayed home.

“KADE’S HERE.” Jason sat down with his plate of food.

“I know,” Libby replied. She’d spotted him almost as soon as he entered the building, as if her Kade radar had been on. It had been just a matter of time until they ended up in the same place at the same time, Otto being as small as it was. She was glad now that she’d gone to see him and that they’d gotten the first big meet-up out of the way. It made things easier. Not great by any means, but easier.

Which made her wonder, did all people feel this much pain over ex-lovers years later? She didn’t have a lot of experience in that particular arena, since she never allowed herself to get serious about anyone. It saved a lot of wear and tear on her emotions.

“Who’s Kade?” Kira, Jason’s wife, asked.

“A blast from the past.” Libby lifted her glass to her lips. No doubt Jason would explain all to his wife later.

Less than an hour after he’d arrived, Kade got to his feet, said his goodbyes to Cal Johnson and the other people at his table and headed for the rear exit. Libby was not at all surprised to see Trista, who’d been cozied up to him since he’d arrived, follow him out the door.

She was, however, surprised to see Trista come back in a few minutes later, her expression bordering on angry. Perhaps Kade had learned to say no, after all. Too bad it was a few years too late.

The jukebox started up, overly loud as always, and Libby accepted a challenge from Menace to play a game of pool. Life went on, and it didn’t really matter if Kade was in Otto or not.

Later, while Kira and Libby’s vet and occasional escort, Stan, were playing one of the worst games of pool Libby had ever witnessed, Jason came to stand next to her. Together they leaned back against the wall, watching the action and occasionally wincing as an easy shot went askew.

“Doing all right?” Jason finally asked in a gruff, man-not-comfortable-talking-about-emotions voice.

“I haven’t been hit by the cue ball yet.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“I’m doing fine in every possible way.” She shifted her gaze sideways toward Jason. “I went to see him.” She didn’t have to explain which him she meant.

“Yeah?”

She moistened her lips. “I met his daughter. Cute kid.”

Jason didn’t reply. At least one of them wasn’t playing a game.

“I’m still angry,” she said in a low voice, giving up the act as she brought her attention back to the pool table. “I don’t want to feel a damned thing. Nothing. But I can’t help it. It’s disturbing.” On many levels. She exhaled and went silent for a moment before saying philosophically, “He’ll be gone as soon as the ranch sells.”

“Have you seen what kind of shape that ranch is in? It’ll be a while before he gets it ready.”

She gave Jason a sharp look. “Any more good news?”

“I don’t think he’ll bother you.” Jason smiled a little as Libby’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Couldn’t help myself.”

“Jason, keep your nose out of my business. It’s kind of embarrassing to have a self-appointed big brother taking care of business that I need to handle myself.”

But Libby would have done the same for him in a similar situation. In fact, she’d once made an attempt to protect him from the woman who eventually became his wife. Considering the circumstances, though, she’d been justified.

“I understa—Whoa!” Jason jerked sideways, bumping into her, as a ball flew off the table, barely missing him before bouncing off the wall.

“Sorry,” Stan muttered. He took the ball from Jason, put it back on the table and started lining up his next shot.

LIBBY WAS IN A mood the next day, but fortunately no one came close enough to achieve injured-bystander status. Actually all of the employees of the Wesley BLM field office were maintaining low profiles, and whenever Ellen did a walkabout the staff made an effort to appear busy, even if she’d just cut funding for their current project in her massive rearrangement of the budget and now they had little to do.

Ellen seemed quite happy, though. She’d patrol the offices at least twice a day, her perfectly polished glasses sparkling in the dim fluorescent light. Ellen was forever polishing something—her glasses, her desk, her résumé.

Everyone on staff had taken a hit that week except for Libby, who still was working on her recommendations for the range-usage report. Not much Ellen could do about that, since it was almost completed, but Libby’s office mate Stephen had lost his project. He was now busy planning a totally unnecessary range survey in order to justify his existence. Being the newest person on the staff, he was one of Ellen’s favorite victims, and now he sat with his head down, his lanky body hunched over his desk, his wire-rimmed glasses sliding down his nose as he concentrated and tried to make himself invisible.

Several other people had suffered similar hits. The Wesley office was becoming a bureaucratic nightmare. Ellen’s work here was almost done. And no one would write a negative word on her supervisory evaluation because they all wanted the woman promoted and gone.

“Libby …”

Libby grimaced at the sound of Ellen’s voice, set her pencil down on her desk with extreme care and rose to her feet. She straightened her shirt, then followed Ellen down the hall to Ellen’s office. Her boss indicated a map laid out on the desk.

“I’ve noticed that you seem to be concentrating your herd-management efforts on these two areas.” She pointed. “Why is that?”

“One herd was affected by the recent range fires and the other is the one where we’re studying the effects of the contraceptive program.”

“I’m not so much interested in herds as in areas,” Ellen said.

Areas? “I don’t follow you.”

“The area that needs the most management is here.” Again Ellen pointed at a location on the map, making Libby wonder if they were speaking the same language.

“That herd is in fine shape. Not too big, not too small. The range is holding up well.” Which was why they had relocated the mustangs to that particular region after a devastating fire two years ago. It had turned out to be a wise decision.

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